"would have"

Question

I'm starting to notice, more and more, a strange and - to my ear - clumsy construction for the subjunctive. The latest instance, on Radio
4 just now, was:

"If these guys would have done..."
Whereas what I would have expected is "If these guys had done..."

The latter, of course, can also be inverted to "Had these guys done...", whereas I cannot see any way of doing this with the former and retaining any hint of the meaning.
Have other people noticed this ages ago, and I've just been slow about it? Where did it come from? It reminds me of the complex grammatical inventions by Douglas Adams in "Restaurant at the End of the Universe", or Seller & Yeatman's "Had I not would have been galloped?"!
Molly Mockford
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin (My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

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[nq:1]I'm starting to notice, more and more, a strange and - to my ear - clumsy construction for the subjunctive. ... Adams in "Restaurant at the End of the Universe", or Seller & Yeatman's "Had I not would have been galloped?"![/nq]
I think I've heard it before. It sounds clumsy to me too. Be thankful that at least it was "would have" rather than "would of"!
John Hall
"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

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[nq:1]I'm starting to notice, more and more, a strange and - to my ear - clumsy construction for the subjunctive. ... done...", whereas I cannot see any way of doing this with the former and retaining any hint of the meaning.[/nq]
I have a vague feeling that in the backwaters of English usage, it's not unprecedented to encounter things like "Would he have tried harder, he would have won". But I could be imagining it.

But there is the archaic-sounding "Would I had known!" which I know I've seen.
[nq:1]Have other people noticed this ages ago, and I've just been slow about it? Where did it come from? It ... Adams in "Restaurant at the End of the Universe", or Seller & Yeatman's "Had I not would have been galloped?"![/nq]
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage has the following to say about "would have" in place of "had":
The use of would have in place of had in the protasis of a conditional sentence (as in "If they would have come earlier, we could have left on time") has been cited as an error in books on usage since at least 1924 (Barland Greever & Easley S. Jones, The Century Collegiate Handbook ). Such usage appears to be a characteristic of informal speech, in which it may often occur in a contracted form ("If they'd have come earlier ..."). Our evidence indicates that it does not occur in standard writing that finds its way into print, but it is notorious in student writing and therefore a staple of college handbooks even today.
As for the 1924 date, I find the following in a 1907 book, Handbook of Composition , by Edwin C. Woolley, PhD, Assistant Professor of English in the University of Wisconsin:
Would have. Often incorrectly used in if clauses instead of had .
Wrong: If he would have stood by us, we might have won. Right: If he had stood by us, we would have won.

Bob Cunningham, aka Sparky, aka Woody Wordpecker,
Greater Los Angeles, California, USofA
Western American English

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[nq:1]But there is the archaic-sounding "Would I had known!" which I know I've seen.[/nq]
I've come across this too - but it's not a conditional sentence - it means "I wish I had known". The exact grammar or derivation is something I've never quite worked out, even if I know what it means! ;-)

Regards, Einde O'Callaghan

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At 10:36:58 on Mon, 8 Sep 2008, John Hall wrote in (Email Removed):
[nq:1]I think I've heard it before. It sounds clumsy to me too. Be thankful that at least it was "would have" rather than "would of"![/nq]
"I am writing from Canada, if that makes any difference, and yes, it is nothing new. It is not good speech here either."

Molly Mockford
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin (My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

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[nq:1]As for the 1924 date, I find the following in a 1907 book, Handbook of Composition , by Edwin ... if clauses instead of had . Wrong: If he would have stood by us, we might have won.[/nq]
But that's not completely indefensible when we recall that "will" has a "chiefly archaic" meaning of "want to". Then the sentence can be taken to mean "If he had wanted to stand by us, we might have won".

From the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary :
will

1 v.t. Desire, want, wish for, have a mind to, (something);wish or intend (that or that something be done or happen). Chiefly arch. OE.
That's probably not often what users mean when they say "If he would have ". But it might help to explain why the phrase persists at the core of the language.
[nq:1]Right: If he had stood by us, we would have won.[/nq]
Another widely used but "wrong" structure is "If he hadda stood by us", where "hadda" is to me a contraction of the nonstandard "had have".
The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary says "hadda" is a contraction of "had to". I suppose I might understand it to mean that in an appropriate context.
A related contraction is "heeda", as in "If heeda stood by us, we woulda won". It can be taken as a contraction of "he had have" or "he would have" (neither of which is good English of course).
Bob Cunningham, aka Sparky, aka Woody Wordpecker,
Greater Los Angeles, California, USofA
Western American English

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[nq:1]I'm starting to notice, more and more, a strange and - to my ear - clumsy construction for the subjunctive. ... Adams in "Restaurant at the End of the Universe", or Seller & Yeatman's "Had I not would have been galloped?"![/nq]
It's been grating on my ear for years. I have the impression that it originated 'over there', and I wonder if there's some influence from other languages, like German. The identical (wrong) construction happens ever more frequently in Icelandic, where the grammar is so complicated that teachers in this permissive age may be giving up on drumming it into their unwilling pupils and faulty usage goes uncorrected. Could it be that the same is happening in German, so that it eventually rubs off on to native English speakers?
Noel

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At 23:32:47 on Mon, 8 Sep 2008, Ildhund (Email Removed) wrote in :
[nq:1]It's been grating on my ear for years. I have the impression that it originated 'over there', and I wonder ... it be that the same is happening in German, so that it eventually rubs off on to native English speakers?[/nq]
What would be the German equivalent of (a) the right way in English and (b) the wrong way in English? Anybody know for sure?

Although I doubt if Commonwealth English is much influenced by German; surely the usual path is German -> Yiddish -> US English - Commonwealth English? And that takes generations.

Molly Mockford
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin (My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

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[nq:1]"If these guys would have done..."[/nq]
...
[nq:1]Have other people noticed this ages ago, and I've just been slow about it? Where did it come from?[/nq]
I noticed it a long time ago, particularly with US speakers, and often accompanied by a bizarre sequence of tenses that is nothing like anything I learned at school in English, Latin or any other language.

Graham Gooch on Test Match Special seems to revel in this sort of 'would-en' English, and he probably spells it 'would of'.

Another way the Americans have of using 'would' goes sonething along the lines of 'Whenever he would come into town he stayed at the Ritz.' I can't remember the precise construction, but sounds the wrong way around to a naive northerner.

Alan Pemberton
Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England
To e-mail me directly, please visit

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At 18:01:06 on Wed, 10 Sep 2008, Alan Pemberton
(Email Removed) wrote in :
[nq:1]Another way the Americans have of using 'would' goes sonething along the lines of 'Whenever he would come into town he stayed at the Ritz.' I can't remember the precise construction, but sounds the wrong way around to a naive northerner.[/nq]
Yes, "Whenever he came to town he would stay at the Ritz" would be just fine; the other definitely feels upside-down!

Molly Mockford
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin (My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

"would have"

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